As technology advances, product designs in general, and designs for mobile products in particular are becoming smaller and smaller. Although the use of surface mount electronic components has enabled some amount of size reduction, product designs sizes are continuing to be driven smaller. Size reductions are now being hindered by the limitations brought on by the physical area taken up by the surface mount parts. In many cases space above a circuit board is wasted, such as for example when a single large component requires a certain amount of vertical space to be left above the circuit board while other component lie relatively flat.
In addition, new devices and technologies are using an increasing number of integrated circuits (ICs). Providing robust and reliable power and ground voltages to these ICs can be important for allowing the ICs to function correctly. Often, decoupling capacitors are used to manage the power supplied to an IC. A decoupling capacitor can act as a reservoir of charge, which is released when a power supply voltage at a particular current load drops below some tolerable level. Alternatively, decoupling capacitors can be an effective way to reduce the impedance of power delivery systems operating at high frequencies. The efficacy of a decoupling capacitor can depend on an amount of inductance and resistance included in the connection between the capacitor and the IC. In particular, longer distances between the capacitors and the IC can increase a likelihood that the IC will experience voltage dips that can cause malfunctions.
Therefore, what is desired is a reliable way to place a large number of passive devices such as capacitors a short distance from an IC while efficiently using the space available within an electrical device.